Talk:Flaming (Internet)

Wow

No sooner did I get this up than people start changing it. But thanks, my feeble attempts to define the verb "to flame" have fairly been deleted.

Unique or Not?

"Electronic communications do not easily transmit facial expressions or voice intonations which may serve to moderate the tone of a message": people always say this sort of thing, but it is essentially iditoic. Printed, or, usually, handwritten (it would be very rare that the handwriting could give someone an idea as to the "tone") text (in books and magazines, in letters, and so forth) has the same characteristics. To pretend this is something unqiue to electronic media is ridiculous. I think this article should be edited accordingly. --Daniel C. Boyer 16:28, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

You can't have a conversation in a book. Martin 17:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It doesn't matter; the one-way message is subject to the same misinterpretations about tone. And in real correspondence there is no difference (with possible, very subtle exceptions) in the possibility of misinterpretation as in e-mail. I stand by what I wrote. --Daniel C. Boyer 18:19, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

You could argue then that it's not a single misunderstanding that gives electronic media this problem. You could instead say that the main cause of the problem is the speed of reply and commentary. I mean, we are talking about dense amounts of information being exchanged at rates comparable with face-to-face conversations -- it's not something we've had experience in until (relatively) recently.--T-Boy 17:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Exactly; the 'feedback loop' is what creates the heat and anger; that's where Daniel C. Boyer's book analogy falls down. Heenan73 13:56, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Also, most books and magazines are written by (somewhat) skilled writers and editors who carefully fine-tune what's written so that it expresses the message correctly. Most people who communicate electronically aren't usually the greatest writers, so messages are generally whipped up in a few minutes and not closely edited, thus making it easier to misunderstand tone. Mole 13:48, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Is fag-flaming about fags or about flaming?

Removed POV addition to article. POV segment added below:

Fag-flaming

"Fag flaming" is something that was invented by a set of individuals who post on a site called www.brawl-hall.com named Doomsday, Evil Blood and Danger. This term was used by them because they were unable to hang with prominent well established flamers in the community such as Ruthless1, Running Gag, flu and The Joke. Thus, this term was invented to label all of their flame,s even ones that had nothing at all to do with homosexuals. Said people were highly jealous of the abilities of others, and are one of the most hated sites on the internet. This is not up for debate, and can be proven by certain individuals who have saved dats to their hard drives since the sites have gone down. It should also be noted that siad site, has a major obsession with the person known as Ruthless1. Recently, http://www.flamechamps.com/ have claimed ownership over said site, as have others in the past.

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Would it be a better idea to separate 'flaming' in its computer forum context and 'flaming' in reference to homosexuality?--T-Boy 04:45, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree; placing these two topics side-by-side is at best confusing. I've moved the homosexual flaming link to the disambiguity page - shouldn't this item be added to homosexuality or a related page, where I'm sure it will be absorbed appropriately?. This appears to me to be more a sub-set of 'handbags at dawn' than a spcial case of flaming, but I may have missed something ... Heenan73 13:45, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Favorite Flame subjects

I first heard the term flame-war when I just so happened to surf into a BattleCruiser 3000AD review article. It briefly mentioned its (in)famous creator Derek Smart and his "adventures". Perhaps he should get a special mentioning in this article.

Origins

Can it be fairly said that the origins of the word are likely the result of a "flame" icon appearing next to active and long threads in message boards (to indicate the thread is "hot") ? Or someone know of a documented "first-use?". — Ben 23:19, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

this is an interesting post --Froth 01:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tragedy of the Commons

"Flaming is one of a class of economic problems known as The Tragedy of the Commons, when a group holds a resource (in this case, communal attention), but each of the individual members has an incentive to overuse it." This should be sourced and attributed at the very least. Its hardly obvious or non-controversial - it looks like original research or commentary. The 'tragedy of the commons' theory is itself disputed.

That sounds pretty obvious to me. There's nothing wrong with a little expository commentary, and it's certainly not original research --Froth 00:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Cause of Many Flame Wars

This article from Slashdot (posted by CmdrTaco) may offer some explanation as to the origins of many Flame Wars.

The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

A possible cause of flaming could be to use it similar to old greek ostrakism (450 b.C.)as a means to fight too powerful and, or misbehaving citicens. With this instrument people could ban by election one person for 10 years. Of course in the times of the internet 10 years is too long, but perhaps 6 months? Das Internet eine globale Agora